Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life

About the Book

Lisa Kogan is a forty-nine-year-old single woman who maintains that every human being deserves a great mattress, a comfortable pair of shoes, and a very smart shrink, and that no one has grown a decent tomato since 1963. She used to think the world wasn't all that complicated, but along came AIDS and crack and Rush Limbaugh, and she had to think again. Still, she's nostalgic for that time when you had to walk all the way across the room to change channels and there was no such thing as a spy satellite capable of spotting a precancerous mole on her left thigh.

In Someone Will Be with You Shortly, Kogan grapples with issues big (her six-year-old daughter, Julia, and the 8,000 miles that separate them from Julia's father) and small (her recent apartment renovation, which consisted of turning over the sofa cushions and then realizing that they looked better the other way) with the self-deprecating humor and deep appreciation for what really matters that have made her column in O, The Oprah Magazine so beloved. Here is a book for anyone who has ever been unnerved by pleather pants, lunch meat, or ambivalent men (not necessarily in that order), but believes that life is a fragile bit of luck well worth living.

“Kogan’s riffs on motherhood, politics, relationships, and life itself are what we wish we’d said, only sharper and funnier. This is good stuff.” —O magazine

“If Lisa Kogan didn’t exist, Nora Ephron would have to invent her. In essays that disarm and delight, Kogan’s take on contemporary living is as irrepressibly savvy as a Prada diaper bag, as reassuringly satisfying as a PB-and-J sandwich.” —Booklist

“Her wry observations of everyday life will hearten you on your worst days, validate you on your best, and make you laugh any day at all. Buy it, if not to keep Lisa writing, then as an investment in your own happiness. God knows you deserve one fail-safe investment.” —Martha Beck, author of Expecting Adam and Finding Your Own North Star

“Lisa Kogan has a singularly humane stance as she makes comic sense of the annoying and baffling facts of life. The inventor of ‘the dessert potato’ has made me laugh for yearsshe’s been a comfort, too.” —Amy Hempel, author of The Collected Stories

“Lisa Kogan might just be the Erma Bombeck of our generation. Sassy, blunt, and so damn true.” —Kelly Corrigan, author of The Middle Place and LIFT

“Kogan delivers stylish and funny meditations on being a single mom, Rush Limbaugh, modern media and much more. There’s laughter here, sure, but this book winningly rises above comedy to reveal a moving love of life.” —Time Out New York

“The ultimate summer readengrossing yet light and fun. From page one you’ll be laughing as the author shares her smile-inducing anecdotes.” —First for Women

“Lisa Kogan is the intellectual and creative love child of Noel Coward and Loretta Lynn. Someone Will Be With You Shortly is a hilarious, honest and tender chronical of everyday life as most of us really live it. Lisa Kogan sings all the right grace notes with absolutely perfect pitch.” —Amy Dickinson, author of The Mighty Queens of Freeville

“Lisa Kogan’s Someone Will Be with You Shortly is a delectable blend of wit, whimsy, pith, and poignancy. If David Sedaris were a girl (who’d had her pocket book licked by a stranger on Lexington Avenue) this is the book he¹d write.” —Evan Handler, author of It's Only Temporary

“I admit it. I’m a big, drooling Lisa Kogan groupie. I’d read the ingredients on a cereal box if I thought she’d written them. She is funny, wise, compelling, loveable, fallible…So a whole book by her? What heaven!!” —Peggy Orenstein, author of Waiting for Daisy

“Lisa Kogan’s Someone Will Be with You Shortly is like curling up with your best, crabbiest, kindest, wisest, most singular friend on earth.” —Peter Smith, author of Two of Us: The Story of a Father, a Son, and the Beatles

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